Re: 17 Minutes With Bill Gates

Kevin,

You're anti-user and you rant about SUVs -- your long diatribes offer
nothing concrete or useful in the real world. For one moment take on the
"users" perspective -- you don't have to like it, agree with it, or accept
it -- but you'll find that understanding it will help you return from your
fantasy land.

Somewhere along the adventure of life you got lost Kevin just as did Mr.
Gates and Microsoft.

A user can describe what they need in a day, and it will take a development
team a year or more to produce it -- you think about it Kevin and stop
diverting to "not a developer" -- "naive and young" -- etc. etc. -- it
doesn't NOTHING to address a problem. I know exactly how complex software
development is, I started at age 16 in 1980, before computer science was
even taught in my high school.

Rob.

"Kevin Spencer" <kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23YjjRfUOGHA.2176@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well, I'm not going to convince *you* of anything, but for the benefit of
the rest of us...

Look at the numerous posts of frustration from developers and other end
users working with Microsoft's products/tools -- that is the "we". If
you want to pretend "We love to blame" is meaningless then so be it --
but by YOUR own logic, you've just invalidated yourself.

Again, you're identifying yourself with a group that you have invented in
your own mind. I'm frustrated every day; if I didn't accept that, I'd be
better off doing something else for a living. However, I am not about to
"blame" anyone for my frustration, and if I did "blame" someone for
something, I certainly would not "love to" do so. That would not be
logical.

The Power to implement change rather than talk about change. He doesn't
have more of it any more -- the company as a whole is just too large.
Bill lives in a eutopia that is not reality and thus his persception is
based on that eutopia -- he has evolved into that Eutopia.

Change is part of life. The entire universe is in a constant state of
change. And every individual has "power" to change certain small things,
by the decisions they make. I believe your concept of having "The Power to
implement change" is not well-thought-out. It simply doesn't exist. We are
like flotsam on the ocean of the universe, swept along by currents that
make our individual influence on our tiny slice of the universe
insignificant. That is true for you, for me, for Bill Gates, and for the
President of the United States. "Power" is an illusion. Personal
responsibility is not. And as far as that goes, you are not repsonsible
for Bill Gates, and he is not resposible for you.

If humans were immortal, you might have a point. But we are not. We live,
and we die. In the end, we accomplish nothing in this world. If there is a
world beyond this, we take nothing from this world into it.

You guessed wrong and I don't follow your logic that I must be young.

Either you are young, or you are a case of arrested development. I tend to
assume the best. The fact that you don't follow my logic in making this
guess is not surprising. I didn't explain the guess with any logic. It was
a guess. It was based on evidence, but not enough evidence to make an
authoritative statement. The guess was based upon a combination of things.
First, your logic is undisciplined. If you are not a developer, this is
often normal. If you are a developer, and you are young and/or
inexperienced, this is also normal. Young people tend to want to identify
themselves with one or more groups (as evidenced by the reference to "we"
that I spoke of earlier). The idea that software which performs a huge
variety of tasks can be made simple is naive at best. This also tends to
inidicate youth, laziness, a non-technical person, or lack of
intelligence. In any case, it was a guess, and the fact that you don't
deny it tends to reinforce the guess.

Belong to a group?? Where did that come from?

As I said, young people tend to identify themselves as belonging to one or
more groups. This gives them a feeling of security. The desire to be
popular is an outgrowth of this. It is not possible to be universally
popular. Therefore, when one desires popularity, it is always with a
specific group of people. The touting of ideas which are popular to a
certain group of people, and are not logical, is evidence that one desires
to belong to that group of people. If the ideas were logical, it would not
indicate this. The criticism of Bill Gates as a person, particularly with
the reference "we love to blame" is (1) pointless, and (2) indicates a
desire to be thought well of by that group of people who "love to blame"
Bill Gates. Therefore, taken together, your statements tend to indicate
that you either want to feel like you belong to some group of people,
and/or feel like you belong to that group of people.

You were able to figure out my statement so I guess it stands and is a
lot less wordy than your "more accurate" statement.

Making a statement less wordy is only a virtue if it does not lose meaning
in the process. I was able to make a guess as to what you were trying to
say, but because of the ambiguous syntax of your 2 statements, it was not
possible to be sure. You apparently agree that my interpretation was
correct. However, the reason I said that my statement was "more accurate"
is that it was less ambiguous. Ambiguity is not an aid to communication,
but a hindrance. If you are able to make a more concise summation of the
idea than mine, with the same lack of ambiguity, you're quite welcome to.

"The problem with this is that to truly make software 'simple to use,'
one must restrict its functionality." -- your thinking in the box, not
out of it. Microsoft's software can and should make far better
intelligent defaults and far fewer steps to perform the end result --
they should guide users thru a task and then save those steps in such a
way it is easy for the user to peform the task again at a later
date/time -- and the list goes ON and ON. There are many ways Microsoft
can make a very complex application/process be "Simple to use" or at the
very least easier to work with.

This is purely naive. First, if it were presently possible to solve this
problem, some software company would have solved it. It's well and good to
criticize Microsoft, but only fair if one comparitively criticizes
Microsoft. What other software company has achieved this utopian goal?
Have you?

This is another statement which tends to indicate that you are either
young (and therefore naive) or not a developer. Developers know how
difficult this sort of problem is to solve. Users see the tip of the
iceberg, and ignore the (,uch greater) part under the water.

Yes, software is becoming increasingly intelligent across the board. This
is the natural course of events, and it cannot be accelerated. This is not
"thinking inside the box." It is simply a fact. "Thinking inside the box"
is the process of attempting to solve a problem by using only existing
methodologies. To "think outside the box" one must be keenly aware of what
is fact, and what is not. One must also be mindful of "the box" and how it
came to be there. Albert Einstein didn't just "come up with" the General
and Special Theory of Relativity. First, he studied all the previous
related work. Then he was able to build on that and come up with something
new. However, I don't see you attempting to solve anything, or proposing
any solution. So, in your case, you are neither thinking "inside the box"
nor "outside the box." When you begin to attempt a solution, we can talk
about it some more.

I can tell you this much: When computers become as intelligent as people,
they will in all probability become just as unreliable.

As for what software "should" do, well, Microsoft is a business. The
purpose of a business is to make money, and provide a good living for
those who participate in it. In addition, a business has a moral
responsibility to not cause any harm to anyone. As far as that goes,
Microsoft does what it "should" do very well. Any other moral evaluation
of Microsoft, or its software, is purely subjective and arbitrary. Yes, I
know that statement is irritating to you, but as my Uncle Chutney sez, "If
the truth hurts, wear it."

VS 2005 for example, go under Tools | Options -- what do we have 9 nodes,
open up those nodes and we have more child nodes, and so on and so on.
Seeing as I am a developer in the real world, it is pretty unlikely I'm
gonna have time to explore several hundred (maybe even hit a thousand) VS
2005 options -- we have a common set of things we like to do -- this is
where Microsft fail miserably. Does it sound like a wizard, perhaps, but
something with more meaning more explanation and just more useful. There
are common defaults, common ways in which developers and/or users
operate -- these are not explored by MS, they just make assumptions
rather than trying to discover the way people really work and operate.

Try Tools|Import/Export Settings. Good software has the ability to change
a lot of things to a somewhat common configuration, which is what Settings
are for. It also has the ability to adapt to more specialized and
low-level tweaking, which is what Options is for. The fact that you are
unaware of this capability is a reflection on you, not the software.

If your trying to dis-credit me somehow, whether I'm a developer or not,
has little bearing on this discussion, nor whether I'm young or not. It
is pretentious of you to think that only developers have valid opinions,
and that young people should be discredited -- this is the VERY thinking
that keeps the 1 in 5 number stable -- not a good thing. Open your mind
Kevin.

Why would I want to discredit *you*? I don't even know you. I find it
humorous that you feel that you can dump all over Microsoft and Bill
Gates, but if someone criticizes your arguments, you become incredibly
defensive. Sauce for the goose, Rob.

Ahh, SUV's rant -- I begin to see -- you may not like what goes in the
"popular" world, but ignoring it or not understanding it doesn't make it
go away. What people do with their lives for entertainment is up to
them, not you -- otherwise you may as well start a religion. Humans like
entertainment, always have and always will -- how that entertainment is
formed is up to each individual.

"Rant?" It was an illustration of the foolishness of doing something which
one considers to be "popular," but is, in fact, illogical. SUVs are
gas-guzzlers, Rob. Gas is becoming increasingly more expensive, and
automobiles depreciate at a very fast rate. The purpose of a
transportation vehicle is to transport. It is part of the "business" of
running one's life. And taken from a purely financial/business standpoint,
an SUV is an extremely poor investment, unless one needs some of the
"off-road" functionality which it comes with. And that is very rare among
SUV owners.

The fact that you think that was a "rant" also tends to indicate
youthfulness on your part. You tend to want to group people into nice neat
little self-defined categories. This colors your perception. "Neither a
follower nor a lender be," as my Uncle Chutney sez. I believe *you* need
to think "outside the box" of whatever group you think you belong to.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy, Horatio. And more types of human beings. About 7 billion types
at the moment.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
.Net Developer
To a tea you esteem
a hurting back as a wallet.


"Rob R. Ainscough" <robains@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u9xklRLOGHA.3408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Look at the numerous posts of frustration from developers and other end
users working with Microsoft's products/tools -- that is the "we". If
you want to pretend "We love to blame" is meaningless then so be it --
but by YOUR own logic, you've just invalidated yourself.

The Power to implement change rather than talk about change. He doesn't
have more of it any more -- the company as a whole is just too large.
Bill lives in a eutopia that is not reality and thus his persception is
based on that eutopia -- he has evolved into that Eutopia.

You guessed wrong and I don't follow your logic that I must be young.
Belong to a group?? Where did that come from?

You were able to figure out my statement so I guess it stands and is a
lot less wordy than your "more accurate" statement.

"The problem with this is that to truly make software 'simple to use,'
one must restrict its functionality." -- your thinking in the box, not
out of it. Microsoft's software can and should make far better
intelligent defaults and far fewer steps to perform the end result --
they should guide users thru a task and then save those steps in such a
way it is easy for the user to peform the task again at a later
date/time -- and the list goes ON and ON. There are many ways Microsoft
can make a very complex application/process be "Simple to use" or at the
very least easier to work with.

VS 2005 for example, go under Tools | Options -- what do we have 9 nodes,
open up those nodes and we have more child nodes, and so on and so on.
Seeing as I am a developer in the real world, it is pretty unlikely I'm
gonna have time to explore several hundred (maybe even hit a thousand) VS
2005 options -- we have a common set of things we like to do -- this is
where Microsft fail miserably. Does it sound like a wizard, perhaps, but
something with more meaning more explanation and just more useful. There
are common defaults, common ways in which developers and/or users
operate -- these are not explored by MS, they just make assumptions
rather than trying to discover the way people really work and operate.

Microsoft applications/tools are engineered for what turns out to be
about the same number of people that use MS software 20% (1 in 5 people)
of the US population -- if Microsoft want to find the other 80% they need
to focus more on software the works on a human level rather than some
"visioned" level that only 20% of the population can deal with or want to
deal with. Sure 20% still provides a nice big fat revenue stream, but the
true innovation and potential has not yet been discovered by Bill or
Microsoft because they are too consumed within -- they don't stop and ask
the questions.

And please, what is with this "you're not a developer" -- and "you're
young" crap?? If your trying to dis-credit me somehow, whether I'm a
developer or not, has little bearing on this discussion, nor whether I'm
young or not. It is pretentious of you to think that only developers have
valid opinions, and that young people should be discredited -- this is
the VERY thinking that keeps the 1 in 5 number stable -- not a good
thing. Open your mind Kevin.

Ahh, SUV's rant -- I begin to see -- you may not like what goes in the
"popular" world, but ignoring it or not understanding it doesn't make it
go away. What people do with their lives for entertainment is up to
them, not you -- otherwise you may as well start a religion. Humans like
entertainment, always have and always will -- how that entertainment is
formed is up to each individual.




.

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